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Pastimes : WORLD WAR III -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: robnhood who wrote (250)	3/11/1999 8:14:00 PM
From: nuke44	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 765

Where are we losing you on this? Of course it's the oil. What is so hard to understand about that? I suppose in your perfect world, we could run the infrastructures of commerce and industry on good will and and pious thoughts. Maybe pedantic sophistry could replace fossil fuels. I did a paper on Kuwait as one of my requirements at the Air Force Leadership School at RAF Upwood, UK in the early 1980's. In hindsight, if the State department had just heeded my projected scenario of an impending invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, we could have saved a lot of time and money. Yeah, right. I doubt if that paper made it past the first dust bin it passed, after I graduated. But getting back to my paper, do you know what they export? What they import? What the sum total of their natural resources is? They import literally 100% of their consumables and manufactured goods. Until the establishment of desalinization plants in the 1970's and the rebuilding of these plants following Iraq's benevolent occupation, Kuwait imported 100% of their fresh water. There is none there. As for exports, they export one thing only; the highest grade crude oil in the world, from possibly the richest, easiest to tap oil fields in the world. They produce or export absolutely nothing else because there is nothing else there. Ironically, the only other thing that they have a lot of, sand, is of such a grade that it is useless for any known industrial use. The oil field that they sit atop of is like no other, anyplace else in the world. It is unnecessary to drill for oil in Kuwait, at least not in the traditional sense. In some places the oil seeps up through the sand and lies in pools. In other places the only drilling done is to install a well head that can be opened and closed like a faucet to access the oil only meters below. It is even unnecessary to build storage tanks because that would be redundant, as the oil is already in it's own easily accessible natural tanks. Just off shore of Kuwait lies a continuation of the same oil fields under the waters of the Persian Gulf. Oil is what Kuwait is all about and the only reason that it is not still a deserted province of southern Iraq. It will be an vital player in the world economy for a long time to come. When the oil's gone, Saddam's successors can have it back. So what's your point? We and our allies need the oil and will use whatever means necessary to ensure we get it. There's nothing unvirtuous about that. That's life. What would you have us do? Let's see. We can 1) support the Kuwaiti emirate and ensure that we have ready access to this vital resource or we can 2) hand it to over to Saddam so he can tell us to go piss up a rope and that he would rather set the whole Allah cursed thing on fire than share it with us. That is of course, unless we were willing to grant him control of the entire Middle East, give him some nuclear weapons or at least allow him to procure them somewhere else, and then support him in a showdown with the other nuclear power in the area, Israel. Yep. That's a tough choice. Unless you've got another slant on this that we haven't already heard, change the tape. We're tired of this one.

To: robnhood who wrote (250)	3/11/1999 9:19:00 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 765

Don't feed me the Liberation BS,,,, "it's the oil stupid" ....and who controls it... I think anyone would be naive to claim the Gulf War was fought for any other significant reason than preserving the flow of oil from the region. But it was an invasion nonetheless, regardless whether or not Hussein misread April Glasby's stance on the US opinion. And it severely undermined the balance of power in the region. Btw, our current President was having a few problems of his own when he opted to bomb both Sudan and Iraq last fall. But what about our "humanitarian" missions to Somalia, Ruwanda, and Bosnia? We've lost lives trying to keep these people from tearing each other's guts apart. Do you recommend that we leave them to their own devices and do nothing? Just curious. Regards, Ron

To: robnhood who wrote (250)	3/12/1999 5:37:00 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 765

Iraq didn't exist. Both were part of the Ottoman Empire: The present Al-Sabah dynasty was established in Kuwait in the mid-eighteenth century -- about 1760. Kuwait was nominally a province of the Ottoman Empire, ruled from Constantinople. This was observed on paper but seldom in fact. In 1899 when the Turks threatened to take actual control of the country, the ruling sheikh sought and received British protection. Oil was discovered in Kuwait in 1938 by the Kuwait Oil Company but because of World War II, it was not exported until 1946, after which time Kuwait's economy flourished. Kuwait remained a British protectorate until 1961 when it became independent under Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah. However, when Iraq claimed the emirate in the early 1960s, it once again received British protection. In July 1961 Kuwait joined the Arab League and in 1963 became a member of the United Nations. Also in 1963 the first legislative elections were held and Sheikh Abdullah, the Emir of Kuwait, inaugurated the first National Assembly on 29 February 1963. During the 1980's, Kuwait experienced several terrorist attacks by Shiite Muslim extremists, including one in 1985 which attempted to assassinate the emir. Kuwait, like most Arab states, supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). Kuwait played a major role in establishing the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) consisting of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman in 1981. The Council held a firm position during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 and its seven-month occupation of the Emirate.